Bayview-Hunters Point, a neighborhood in southeastern San Francisco, has long been one of the most impoverished and polluted areas in the city. In an example of environmental racism, much of the African American community in San Francisco was segregated to Bayview-Hunters Point by racist housing policies and practices. This neighborhood was home to the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard (HPNS), which was widely polluted with hazardous wastes from shipyard operation as well as radioactive contamination from the Navy Radiological Defense Laboratory established on this property. The former HPNS was made a federal Superfund site in 1989 and has been in remediation by the Navy since, with the goal of eventual transfer of the land to the city of San Francisco for redevelopment into residential and commercial areas. Throughout the history of the HPNS, government agencies have obscured both radioactive contamination and the nearby disadvantaged community in pursuit of military and economic power. As a result, the forces of redevelopment have outpaced remediation in Hunters Point. In this thesis, I argue that in continuing the environmental racism marginalizes the community in Bayview-Hunters Point and working to hide the contamination at the nearby Superfund site government agencies, primarily the Navy and city government, have fostered the conditions for green gentrification to occur, which could have ill effects on both the longstanding community and new residents.

This thesis introduces <em>Interstitial Urbanity</em> as a strategy for addressing issues of urbanity and place within New York's peripheral developments. Driven primarily by market forces, these developer led office and condominium complexes are currently being constructed along the post-industrial shorelines of New York's outer boroughs. Interstitial urbanity proposes an urban centre: a fragment of place within a non-place settlement. The theory is manifested in the design of an interstice that sits within the Queens West development on the Long Island City waterfront. Taking the form of a multi-layered public space, the interstice is comprised of a waterfront market square flanked by a commuter train terminal and an arts centre housed in a turn of the century power plant.

This thesis introduces <em>Interstitial Urbanity</em> as a strategy for addressing issues of urbanity and place within New York's peripheral developments. Driven primarily by market forces, these developer led office and condominium complexes are currently being constructed along the post-industrial shorelines of New York's outer boroughs. Interstitial urbanity proposes an urban centre: a fragment of place within a non-place settlement. The theory is manifested in the design of an interstice that sits within the Queens West development on the Long Island City waterfront. Taking the form of a multi-layered public space, the interstice is comprised of a waterfront market square flanked by a commuter train terminal and an arts centre housed in a turn of the century power plant.